a) What I think the chapter’s key word is: perception. Postman and Weingartner’s article stresses the importance of an individual’s perception in deciding what types of questions they view worth answering and knowing the answer to.
b) The article wants to educate the reader on how questions play a vital role in students’ understanding of various concepts. In order for students to find questions worth answering, the questions need to be answered with responses that generate more questions. This ensures that students are constantly evolving their answers, rather than coming to dead ends with every question they are faced with in class.
c) How involved should students be in creating the group of questions? How do I ensure that my students will find my questions relevant or pertinent? How often should I use these questions in my classroom?
d) I definitely think that one way I could use questions like these in my classroom is by implementing them when introducing a new novel to the class; a list of questions concerning the setting, plot, and characters would be beneficial to the students. Like an example in the article, questions are also a great way of showing the various meanings of a one particular word. From a lesson plan standpoint I think that it would also be a great planning tool. By asking myself questions that I think students will find worth answering, I can go ahead and include that specific information in my lesson plan.
e) Why is Language so important to teach to middle school students? How in depth should a student’s knowledge of grammatical terms be? Is it necessary to learn how to diagram a sentence? What is the most important thing for students to take away from an ELA classroom?